'  / 

■ 


V 


THE  IDEAL  COMMONWEALTH 

V 

AND  ITS 

REALIZATION. 


A  SERMON 


Delivered  on  Sunday,  October  22D,  1882,  in  the  First 
Unitarian  Church  of  Philadelphia,  • 

■B 


JOSEPH  MAY, 


•  MINISTER  OF  THE  CHURCH. 


Spangler  &  Davis,  Printers,  529  Commerce  Street,  Philadelphia. 


■i  0,  I 
Mi  5  L 


THE  IDEAL  COMMONWEALTH 


AND  ITS 


REALIZATION. 


r- 


r- 


P 


“  The  wilderDGss  and  the  solitary  place  shall 
£  be  glad  for  them ;  and  the  desert  shall  rejoice  and 
bloom  as  the  rose.” — Isaiah,  xxxv.  ii. 

Perennially  strange  is  the  romantic  influence  ot 
lapsing  time !  Like  the  sun  among  floating  dust,  it 
gilds  commonest  things  with  a  glory  not  their  own, 
and  interests  us  in  smallest  details  of  centuries  gone, 
while  corresponding  things  of  to-day  we  pass  by 
^  with  not  a  thrill  of  emotion. 

J  What  is  the  reason  of  this  ? 

>  Carlyle  compares  Time  to  the  poet,  who  has  the 
art  to  invest  the  flnite  with  infinitude ;  who  “  by 
intensity  of  conception,  by  that  gift  of  transcen¬ 
dental  thought  which  is  fitly  named  genius  and  inspi¬ 
ration,  can  ennoble  the  actual  into  idealness.”  But  his 
explanation  itself  requires  explaining  perhaps'.  What 
C is  it  to  make  the  actual  ideal,  to  bring  out  the  infi- 
^  nite  element  in  the  finite  ?  Is  it  not  merely  to  dis- 
.jcover  and  bring  to  view  the  truth  that  is  lodged  in 
>every  thing  that  has  reality  ?  Some  things  in  life,  as  the 
Mmere  vital  processes  and  necessities,  are  below  poetry, 
?for  they  belong  wholly  to  the  outward.  Whatso¬ 
ever  can  be  made  poetical  must  have  an  eternal 

372228 


4 


THE  IDEAL  COMMONWEALTH 


element  in  it,  that  is,  it  must  have  truth,  moral  sig¬ 
nificance  in  it.  Now  from  the  things  remote  by  the 
long  process  of  tradition,  and  the  rough  handling 
inseparable  from  this,  the  outer,  the  merely  temporal 
element,  is  stripped  partly.  A  multitude  of  external 
accessories  are  lost  out  of  view,  and  only  the  sub¬ 
stance  of  the  event  or  act  is  preserved  to  us,  in 
which  substance,  and  making  it  substance,  is  the 
truth  of  the  event  contained,  which  so  we  are  able 
to  see ;  the  more  as  in  reference  to  long  past  things 
our  eyes  themselves  are  clearer  from  prejudice  and 
prepossession. 

But  wdth  present  matters  this  is  not  so.  Here  the 
truth  is  deeply  overlaid  by  its  accessories  and  acci¬ 
dents,  it  has  been  as  yet  neither  threshed  or  win¬ 
nowed ;  it  has  been  not  yet  interpreted  by  succeed¬ 
ing  events  and  issues,  and  finally  we  are  all  of  us, 
besides  being  thus  untaught  by  facts,  full  of  precon¬ 
ceptions  and  partisanship,  the  sport  so  largely  of 
our  temperaments  and  education.  So  we  discern 
only  the  worthless  temporal  envelope,  and  not  the 
everlasting  kernel.  We  feel  the  prose,  the  insi¬ 
pidity,  and  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  do  more.  Only 
some  prophet,  some  vates^  prophet  and  poet  in  one, 
can  do  more  than  this  usually.  Even  when,  as  in 
our  late  war,  we  know  we  are  living  in  great  times, 
few  can  see  the  poetry  because  few  really  feel  the 
truth  of  them.  That  is  the  reason  the  war  pro¬ 
duced  so  little  poetry — only  one  piece  worth  naming 
and  that  a  woman’s.  For,  after  all,  its  deepest  issues 
were  but  dimly  apprehended  by  the  masses.  And 
the  day  when  mere  soldiering  could  deeply  inspire 
men  had  gone  by.  The  comparatively  trivial  factious 


AND  ITS  REALIZATION. 


6 


strifes  of  the  Stuart  era  in  England  produced  a  crop 
of  lyrics  which  can  hardly  die,  because  the  men  were 
so  in  earnest  for  the  truth,  such  as  it  was,  which 
they  were  fighting  for.  Our  magnificent  struggle 
gave  birth,  as  I  say,  to  nothing  worth  the  name. 
The  well,  at  the  bottom  of  which  our  truth  lay,  was 
too  deep.  A  century  hence  will  see  it,  and  then  the 
poetry  will  come  out  in  fact  if  not  in  form. 

I  incline  to  think  something  of  this  is  true  in 
regard  to  all  our  American  past.  No  science  has 
been  so  ill  and  clumsily  taught  as  history ;  the 
husks  and  shells  forever  offered  ;  the  spirit,  the  truth 
left  unregarded  and  cast  aside.  We  are  taught  in 
youth  dates  and  places  and  men’s  names ;  what 
really  happened,  what  men  dld^  what  events  estab¬ 
lished  and  helped  along  we  do  not  learn.  We  hear 
the  noises  of  drums  and  trumpets  and  the  din  of 
battle;  but  the  seed  of  truth,  like  all  others,  springs 
up  noiselessly,  and  we  do  not  hear  or  see  it  growing 
under  the  feet  of  the  trampling-  hosts.  So  although 
this  is  an  era  of  anniversaries  and  celebratings,  cen¬ 
tennials  and  bi-centennials,  there  has  been,  to  my 
mind,  a  hollowness  in  the  apparent  joy,  and  more 
real  interest  in  the  festivities  themselves  than  in  the 
events  they  commemorate.  I  fear  this  will  even  be 
more  true  of  the  fete  which  is  now  approaching  than 
of  that  of  six  years  ago.  There  was  a  clear  and 
-tangible  issue  recalled  before  us  then ;  not  a  very 
profound  one  in  itself  some  have  thought,  yet  its 
issues  were,  through  the  grace  of  circumstances, 
s  great  and  momentous.  Political  independence  is  a 
,  thought  easy  to  grasp,  a  desire  easy  to  establish  in 
men’s  hearts.  Csesar  himself  bears  witness  that  it  is 


6 


THE  IDEAL  COMMONWEALTH 


a  vearnino;  o;ermane  and  native  to  all  men’s  hearts  to 
he  free.  But  the  suggestion,  the  hidden  meaning, 
the  truth,  which  informed  the  outward  founding  of 
this  Commonwealth,  although  of  an  order  parallel, 
was  deeper  and  more  refined.  Perhaps  it  was  less 
distinctly  grasped.  Perhaps,  too,  men  really  value  it 
less,  abstractly.  When  freedom  of  opinion  is  invaded, 
the  exercise  of  thought  forbidden,  there  are  always 
found  those  who  will  hazard  and  surrender  much  for 
it,  will  even  go  to  the  stake  for  it ;  but  when  attained 
in  their  own  cases  the  majority  seldom  so  appreciate 
its  beauty  and  preciousness  that  they  diligently  vin¬ 
dicate  it  for  those  who  differ  from  themselves  in  the 
details  of  thought  to  which  mental  independence 
brings  them. 

O 

William  Penn’s  ideal  of  a  State,  which  he  had 
before  him  in  the  founding  of  this  Commonwealth, 
was  unquestionably  of  the  very  highest.  I  think  he 
was  himself  a  great  man  ;  if  not  a  great  man  of  the 
first  order,  still  truly  great.  He  who  is  such,  it  has 
been  said,  “  belongs  to  his  age  even  more  than  other 
men,  being  properly  the  epitome  and  synopsis  of  his 
age,  with  its  interests  and  influences  ;  but  belongs 
likewise  to  all  ages,  otherwise  he  is  not  great.” 
Certainly  this  canon  remains  true  of  Penn  in  both 
its  branches.  He  was  very  fairly  an  epitome  of  his 
time,  of  which  the  significant  movement,  the  char¬ 
acteristic,  vital  idea,  was  that  two-sided  one  of  per¬ 
sonal  and  mental  independence.  Cromwell  had  come 
and  gone,  indeed,  his  sun  setting  in  a  cloud.  But  a 
cloud  to  last  only  a  night,  for  the  idea  of  liberty, 
no  new  one  to  the  British  heart,  was  not  quenched 
in  the  vile  and  foolish  era  of  Charles  II  or  the 


AND  ITS  REALIZATION. 


7 


fatuous  reign  of  James  IT,  only  resting  a  little,  and 

not  even  that,  after  the  struggle  of  the  greater  age 

before.  It  was  still  the  burden  of  the  best,  the  most 

real  English  thought  and  hope  ;  indeed  it  always  has 

been  from  remotest  times  a  plant  indigenous  in  that 

\ 

little  island.  In  Penn’s  day  the  Quakers  were  by  no 
means  practically  its  best  friends,  nor  most  effective 
servants,  but  rather  the  other  non-conformists  of  the 
Puritan  stripe,  who  would  make  no  terms  with  a 
royal  dissembler,  despised  his  insincere  professions  of 
the  liberal  princ'ple  in  religion,  and  upheld  the  Test 
Act  as  a  real  bulwark  of  freedom  of  conscience.  Yet 
Penn,  the  intimate  of  two  dissolute  kings,  whose 
characteristic  ideas  and  purposes  (especially  James’s) 
were  exactly  antagonistic,  held  unwaveringly  to  all 
the  best  ideals  of  personal  independence,  lie  was  a 
true  Englishman  in  this. 

But  he  was  someth! ns:  more  than  an  EnHish- 
man;  he  approached  the  type  which  afterwards 
drew  much  of  its  life  from  the  idealistic  soil  of 
France,  and  made  its  appearance  rather  on  ours — 
the  Jefferson  type — for  he  loved  liberty  not  merely 
as  the  practical  fact,  the  actual  right  of  particular 
citizens,  which  was  more  the  English  and  Puritan 
way,  but  he  loved  it  as  an  abstraction,  an  idea,  and  as 
such,  before  there  was  a  community  to  enjoy  it, 
delighted  at  the,  thought  of  providing  for  its  realiza¬ 
tion.  But  besides  this  principle  of  'political  freedom, 
this  idealist  entered  early  in  life  into  that  other,  of 
which  the  Quakers  were  the  extreme  representatives, 
of  religious  and  mental  freedom.  There  is  some¬ 
thing  inexpressably  pathetic,  it  seems  to  me,  in  such 
popular  uprisings  as  that  of  Quakerism  ;  wherein 


8 


THE  IDEAL  COMMONWEALTH 


you  8oe  tliO  Truth  in  its  innjesity  and  force  and 
vitalitj",  when  flounted  and  denied  among  the  seem¬ 
ing  great  ones,  and  in  the  church  which  should  be 
its  sanctuary,  coming  into  the  hearts  of  the  ignorant 
and  obscure,  men  who  hardly  knew  how  to  inter¬ 
pret  it  and  so  run  into  vagary  and  grotesqueness, 
yet  who  are  overfilled  wdth  it,  love  it,  accept  it, 
humbly  listen,  and  in  a  groping  wmy  tiy  faithfully 
to  carry  it  out  in  their  own  lives  and  to  the  hearts 
of  other  men.  That  poor  leather-clad  cobbler,  George 
Fox,  his  little  vessel  spilling  with  his  thought  of 
reality  in  wmrship  and  morals,  of  the  divinity  in  man 
audient,  ever  and  momentarily,  of  the  word  from 
the  Infinite  Divine,  plodding  through  the  muddy 
lanes,  sleeping  in  barns  and  under  hayricks,  wet  by 
(lay  and  cold  by  night,  refusing  doles,  fearless  of 
consequences  and  of  men,  that  he  may  but  reach 
the  hearts  of  his  fellows  with  his  truth,  and  call 
them  from  conventional  ways  to  a  true  wmrship  and 
a  real  morality, — I  say  this  humble  figure,  full  of 
zeal,  full  of  courage,  takes  his  place  beside  St.  Paul. 
And  the  men  who  listened  to  him,  here  and  there 
some  tender  hearted  man  or  \voman  of  position;  once 
or  twuce  a  true  priest;  above  all,  in  almost  every 
sense,  he  who  became  the  founder  of  this  Common¬ 
wealth,  but  mainl}^  the  humbler  sort,  to  whom  the 
words  of  Fox  brought  mental  bewilderment  along 
wdth  spiritual  stir  and  uprising,  these  all  will  touch 
kind  hearts  forever  with  sympathy,  and  sensitive 
ones  with  rebuke  also.  Nowadays  we  seem  to  lack 
something  in  having  no  stakes  or  jails  to  go  to  for 
our  faiths.  New  truth  is  almost  losing  the  crown 
of  unpopularity  in  these  hospitable  days. 


AND  ITS  REALIZATION. 


9 


William  Penn,  I  say,  was  in  the  fullest  measure 
a  type  also  of  this  other  kind  of  liberty,  the  spiritual, 
which  early  Quakerism  presented  in  the  most  extreme 
and  abstract  form  that  had  been  heard  of  up  to  his 
dav,  and  almost  ever  since. 

V  i 

And  it  is  most  interesting  to  see  how  the  entrance 
into  his  mind  of  this  idea  and  spirit  of  moral  inde¬ 
pendence  inspired  him  to  see  truth.  As  in  some  of 
his  political  utterances  he  anticipated  by  a  hundred 
years  i\\Q  blazing  ubiquities^'  as  Emerson  called  them, 
of  our  Declaration  of  Independence,  so  there  is  hardly 
anything  to  be  added  or  modified  in  his  expressions  on 
religious  topics.  They  have  the  most  modern  sound 
conceivable,  and  equallj^  antici})ate  almost  the  ex- 
tremest  claims  of  the  liberalist  of  the  present  day. 

In  his  “  Address  to  Protestants  of  all  persua¬ 
sions”  in  1679,  he  enumerates  several  great  errors 
of  his  day,  of  which  two  are  these.  1st.  That  of 
making  opinions  articles  of  faith,  and  of  making 
them  at  the  same  time  the  bond  of  Christian  Commun¬ 
ion.  Here  his  objections  to  creeds  are  as  searching 
and  emphatic  as  words  could  make  them.  You 
would  think  Dr.  Channing  was  speaking.  “  They 
set  the  head  at  work,”  he  says,  “  but  not  the  heart, 
and  what  Christ  most  insisted  on  is  least  concerned 
in  this  sort  of  Christianity,  for  it  is  opinion,  not 
obedience,  notion  not  regeneration  which  is  aimed 
at.”  “  It  had  been  happy  for  the  world  if  there  had 
been  no  other  creeds  than  those  Christ  and  his  apostles 
gave  and  left,  and  it  is  not  the  least  argument  against 
their  being  needful  to  Christ’s  Communion  that  Christ 
and  his  apostles  did  not  think  them  so.” 


10 


THE  IDEAL  COMMONWEALTH 


Consistently  ^yith  these  strong  words,  the  second 
error  he  condemns  is  that  of  debasing  the  true  value  of 
morality^  under  the  pretence  of  higher  things.  “  It  is  the 
custom,”  he  says,  (and  I  wish  his  words  may  ring  and 
penetrate  certain  quarters  today)  “it  is  the  custom  to 
decry  men  of  moral  lives  because  they  are  not  of  a 
particular  faith.”  He  reprobates  in  strongest  terms 
this  custom.  He  ridicules  the  notion  that  a  man  who 
repeats  his  creed  by  heart  is  sure  of  being  within  the. 
pale  of  salvation,  however  profane  his  life,  while 
another  is  denied  it,  though  his  life  is  upright,  ^^ifhe 
happens  not  to  he  ivell  skilled  in  what  may  he  called  the 
mysteries  of  the  Christian  religion'^  They  who  so 
maintain  deny,  he  says,  that  morality  is  part  of 
Christianity;  they  “  mistake  the  end  of  Christ’s  com¬ 
ing,  which  was  as  St.  Paul  says,  to  deliver  men  from 
actual  sinning  ;  to  redeem  themjrom.  all  iniquity.'^ 

Alas,  that  such  words  were  not  only  far  in 
advance  of  Penn’s  own  age,  but  still  rebuke  the 
utterances  of  the  largest  section  of  the  popular  church* 
Again,  how  far  he  was  beyond  his  age,  and 
abreast  even  of  the  present,  he  showed  in  1674,  when 
he  maintained  the  absolute  secularity  of  government.,  and 
claimed  that  “  Religion  under  any  modification  or  church 
government  was  no  part  of  the  old  English  Constitution  ” 
but  that  ‘Wo  live  honestly.,  to  injure  not  another  hut  to 
give  every  one  his-  due,  entitled  every  native  to  the 
privileges  of  an  Englishman.^^ 

Finally  how  profound  these  convictions  were,  he 
showed  in  1681,  when  he  expressed  the  fundamental 
principles  of  his  new^  government  in  these  immortal 
words :  “  In  reverence  to  God,  the  Father  of  light  and 
spirits,  the  author  as  well  as  the  object  of  all  divine 


AND  ITS  REALIZATION. 


11 


knowledge,  faith  and  worship,  Ido,  for  me  and  mine, 
declare  and  establish  for  the  first  fandamental  of  the 
government  of  my  province,  that  every  person  who 
shall  reside  therein,  shall  enjoy  the  free  profession  of 
his  or  her  faith,  and  exercise  and  worship  toward 
God  in  such  way  and  manner  as  every  such  person 
shall  in  conscience  believe  is  most  acceptable  to 
God.  And  as  long  as  every  such  person  useth  not 
this  Christian  liberty  to  licentiousness  or  the  destruc¬ 
tion  of  others,  to  speak  loosely  or  profanely  or  con¬ 
temptuously  of  God,  the  Holy  Scriptures,  or  religion, 
*  *  he  or  she  shall  be  protected  in  the  aforesaid 

Christian  liberty  by  the  civil  magistrate.” 

I  cannot  refuse  the  title  of  greM  to  the  man  who 
could  write  and  enact  sentences  like  those,  two  hun¬ 
dred  years  ago!  It  is  idle  to  question  the  sincerity  of 
convictions  so  expressed,  and  with  which  he  was  en¬ 
tirely  consistent  in  the  whole  spirit  of  his  life  and  lan¬ 
guage  from  the  days  even  of  youth  and  as  long  as  he 
lived.  lie  had  been  suffering  for  them  all  his  life, 
when  his  social  relations  offered  him  the  most  easy  and 
prosperous  career  had  he  denied  them.  In  the  establish¬ 
ment  of  the  Jerseys,  he  had  incorporated  them,  and 
when  the  opportunity  offered  of  founding  a  new  and 
greater  colony,  it  was  wdth  an  ardor  unquestionally 
genuine  that  he  embraced  it,  to  realize  in  its  constitu¬ 
tion  these  most  advanced  principles.  There  could  be 
no  more  affecting  conffrraation  of  this — were  one 
wanting — than  was  exhibited  in  his  treatment  of  the 
Indians ;  in  which  he  mingled  the-  tenderness  of  a 
parent  wdth  the  equal  respect  and  justice  of  man  to 
brother  man,  conduct  which  had  never  before  been 
thought  of,  and  which  after  two  centuries  of  cruelty 


12 


THE  IDEAL  COMMONWEALTH 


and  bloodshed  this  great  nation  is  only  now  beginning 
to  imitate. 

Midway  between  Penn  and  us,  Pennsylvania’s 
greatest  though  adopted  citizen,  a  man  of  practicality 
in  the  extreme,  a  man  of  the  world,  though  in  the 
best  sense,  a  moralist,  an  economist,  not  an  idealist,  a 
hater  of  cant,  naturally  enough  had  something  of  an 
repulsion  from  such  a  character.  Franklin  was  the 
typical  Puritan  in  these  qualities  ;  and  although  he 
held  to  the  full  the  original  Quaker  idea  of  spiritual 
liberty  and  carried  its  interpretations  beyond  Penn, 
could  not  abide  a  doctrinaire  such  as  Penn  seemed 
to  him  to  be,  nor  have  patience  with  his  abstract¬ 
ions.  So  he  sneers  at  the  idealist,  whose  capacity 
for  practical  affairs  he  evidently  doubted  and 
somewhat  despised.  Speaking  of  Penn’s  original 
frame  of  government  for  Pennsylvania,  he  says,  “  At 
the  head  of  it  is  a  short  preliminary  discourse  which 
serves  to  give  us  a  more  lively  idea  of  William  Penn 
preaching  in  Grace  Church  Street,  than  we  derive 
from  Eaphael’s  cartoon,  of  Paul  preaching  at  Athens. 
As  a  man  of  conscience  he  sets  out ;  as  a  man  of 
reason  he  proceeds ;  and  as  a  man  of  the  world  he 
offers  the  most  plausible  conditions  to  all,  to  the  end 
that  he  might  gain  some.”  It  is  incredible  that  one 
such  hearty  lover  of  freedom  could  so  flout  another. 
But  even  so,  Franklin  is  compelled  immediately  to 
add  that  “  two  paragraphs  of  this  discourse,  the 
people  of  Pennsylvania  ought  to  have  forever  before 
their  eyes,  to  wit :  1st.  “Any  government  is  free  to 
the  people  (whatever  be  its  frame)  where  the  laws 
rule  and  the  people  are  a  party  to  those  laws.  And 
more  than  this  is  tyranny,  oligarchy,  and  confusion. 


AND  ITS  REALIZATION. 


13 


2d.  To  support  power  in  reverence  with  the  people, 
and  to  secure  the  people  from  the  abuse  of  power ; 
that  the  people  may  be  free  by  their  just  obedience, 
and  the  magistrates  honorable  for  their  just  adminis¬ 
tration,  are  the  great  end  of  all  government.” 

W  ell  might  the  grand  old  cynic  praise  words  like 
these !  he  never  himself  wrote  any  more  comprehen¬ 
sive,  more  suggestive,  more  true,  or  more  simple. 

Of  the  merits  of  the  questions  which  so  soon 
arose  between  Penn  and  his  colonists ;  of  the  perplexi- 
ities  into  which  he  was  thrown,  of  obstacles  to  his 
visions  and  opposition  to  his  efforts,  this  is  not  the 
place  to  speak,  and  it  is,  perhaps,  hard  now  anywhere 
to  judge.  I  see  in  them,  chiefly,  an  illustration  of 
the  difficulty  with  which  the  ideal  is  always  beset  in 
its  attempts  to  become  real-  Start  with  any  noble 
ideal,  and  how  at  once  a  crop  of  practical  objects  are 
sprung  upon  you  by  “  the  men  of  this  generation,” 
as  Jesus  called  them,  who  are  always  so  much  wiser, 
at  this  transition  pointy  than  the  children  of  light.  - 
Objections  usually,  which  need  not  exist  if  only  all 
men  were  ideal,  or  even  unselfish;  but  they  are  not^ 
and  this  is  the  thing  the  man  of  the  world  knows 
best  and  sees  first.  So  I  am  not  surprised,  though  it 
were  true,  as  Franklin  further  says  with  his  rude 
incisiveness,  that  “  when  the  scene  of  action  was 
shifted  from  the  mother  country  to  this,  the  deport¬ 
ment  of  the  legislator  was  shifted  too.  Less  of  the 
man  of  God  now  appeared^  and  more  of  the  man  of  the 
worldr  Do  you  remember  how  Moses,  that  early  man 
of  God,  felt  and  acted  when  he  came  down  for  Mt. 
Sinai  ?  So  Penn  who,  like  him,  had  in  his  retirement 
at  home,  smoothly  drawn  up  his  utopian  framework. 


14 


THE  IDEAL  COMMONWEALTH 


naturally  struck  upon  practical  snags  and  shoals 
when  he  came  here  to  launch  it.  He  doubtless  lacked 
the  wisdom  and  tact  of  Franklin  and  w^as  possibly 
wanting  in  that^6r^,  which  is  the  remarkable  charac¬ 
ter  of  the  Puritan  type.  He  was  deficient,  I  judge,  in 
the  power  of  reading  and  of  controlling  men.  He 
was  compelled  to  be  arbitrary  while  professing  perfect 
liberality  ;  he  had  to  feel  his  way,  trying  experiments 
and  changing  plans,  and  so  gave  ofience  and  handles 
to  his  enemies.  It -is  a  result  of  defective  political 
skill,  to  become  inconsistent  and  to  seem  insincere. 
So  he  \vas  accused  of  artifice,  and  of  many  selfish 
motives.  He  w^as  full  of  business  troubles,  and  was 
largely  obliged  to  direct  affairs  from  home,  then 
indefinitely  further  away  than  it  is  now.  He  acted 
too  much  through  others.  Finally,  with  all  his 
ideals  and  abstractions,  he  was  accustomed  to  the 
methods  of  arbitrary  governing;  he  felt  himself  the 
owner  of  the  province,  although  he  so  nobly  purposed 
to  give  it  to  a  free  community;  and  these  things  made 
him  sometimes  arbitrary.  Indeed,  it  soon  appeared 
as  was  natural,  that  the  men  of  ihe  province  itself, 
who  had  already  breathed  the  air  of  freedom,  and 
known  it  in  the  concrete,  understood  it  and  even 
valued  it,  better  than  the  idealist  himself.  To  give 
symmetry  in  a  dream’s  accomplishment,  the  dreamer 
has  often  been  willing  to  lop  it,  or  mould  it,  here  and 
there. 

But  all  the  objections  that  have  been  made 
appear  as  small  deductions  from  the  greatness  and 
breadth  of  Penn’s  purpose ;  nor  has  there  perhaps 
ever  entered  any  man’s  mind  and  heart  one  grander, 
or  more  generous  and  gracious.  Witness  one  smallest 


AND  ITS  RNALiZATtON. 


15 


but  most  sio;nificant  detail.  I  doubt  if  into  the  fun- 
daraental  constitution  of  any  community  on  earth 
there  ever  before  or  since  entered  the  short  word 
More  wrote  his  Utopia,  Sidney  his  Arcadia, 
Harrington  (to  whom  Franklin  likens  Penn),  his 
Oceana.  Penn  had  the  wonderful  opportunity  of 
realizing  such  a  dream  as  these.  Would  either 
idealist  have  succeeded  better? 

What  shall  we  say  of  the  actual  issue  of  Penn’s 
dream  ?  I  wonder  what  he  would  say,  if  he  knows 
it,  and  we  could  call  upon  him?  At  least,  he  must 
confess,  were  he  here,  that  wonderfully  prescient  as 
he  w^as,  capable  of  the  largest  expectations  as  all  his 
plans  show,  yet  far  beyond  anything  he  could  then 
conceive,  “  the  desert  has  rejoiced  and  blossomed  as 
the  rose.”  It  was  a  bold  stroke  then,  to  lay  out  a 
city  a. mile  long;  and  stretching  from  river  to  river, 
and  place  its  centre  where  he  did,  a  mile  from  either 
stream.  His  idealism  shows- itself  in  his  planning  it 
all  according  to  a  type  in  his  own  mind,  following 
no  ancient  pattern,  and  not  leaving  it  as  did  the 
Puritans  at  Boston,  and  the  Dutchmen  at  New 
York,  to  grow  as  nature  and  self-interest  should 
guide  it.  And  still,  its  main  defect  (saving  the 
angularity  he  gave  it)  comes  from  his  original  plan 
not  having  grown  with  the  growth  of  his  capital, 
since  it  exceeded  his  utmost  boundaries. 

What  a  pleasing  picture  he  had  in  mind  !  Broad 
streets  coming  fairly  down  to  the  river;  broad  house- 
lots,  each  with  its  dwelling  in  the  middle,  with  its 
lawn  and  trees ;  here  and  there  a  meeting-house,-— 
alas,  without  a  steeple  to  break  the  outline,  point 
heavenward  and  give  a  welcome  to  the  Sabbath 


16 


THE  IDEAL  COMMONWEALTH 


morning,  such  as  used  to  swell  from  the  chimes  of 
his  English  home. 

But  how  could  he  have  imagined  what  we  see 
to-day?  An  area,  I  know  not  how  many  times 
greater,  packed  with  life ;  the  green  lawns  gone,  and 
unsightly  brick  lanes  in  place  of  his  broad  and  open 
ways.  !N^oise  and  bustle ;  filth  which  only  heaven’s 
deluges  can  purge-,  chimneys  by  thousands  sending 
up  their  wasteful  incense  of  smoke,  witnessing  to 
the  million  of  manufactured  wealth  each  day  added 
to  the  world’s  stock ; — the  outward  scene  is  an 
unbeautiful  contrast,  perhaps. 

But  how  much  which  he  would  rejoice  in  I 
Abundance,  comfort,  convenience,  health,  culture, 
progress,  typified  in  a  thousand  instruments  of  ser¬ 
vice  and  provisions  for  human  life  of  which  the 
remotest  vision  could  not  have  come  to  him,  And 
beyond,  over  the  vast  expanding  state,  farms  rich 
from  generations  of  culture;  cattle  on  a  thousand 
hills ;  mines,  mills  and  happy  homes. 

The  real  beauty  of  human  life  has  always  to  be 
seen  through  the  rubbish  and  exuvise  it  casts  aside 
as  it  develops.  The  first  effect  of  man’s  coining 
among  the  scenes  of  untamed  nature  is  to  blot 
and  scar  it.  He  cuts  down  the  trees,  defiles  the 
streams,  estranges  the  timid,  trustful  beasts,  and 
mars  all  the  beauty  and  wild  dignity  he  encounters. 
How  magnificent  in  their  virgin,  silent  freshness, 
rolled  the  great  Delaware  and  Schuylkill  when  only 
the  ineff'ective  savage  skirted  their  banks  I  On  their 
green  shores  the  unassaulted  forests,  fulfilling  nature’s 
term  and  dropping  only  under  the  stroke  of  age  or 
lightning,  to  moulder  moss-grown  and  make  new 


AND  ITS  REALIZATION. 


17 


soil  for  their  successors!  The  grass  waved  and 
the  flowers  twinkled  and  all  was  clean  and  fair.  But 
how  useless!  how  devoid  of  signiflcance !  It  was 
when  men^ — that  ivcre  men— came,  smote  the  trees, 
trampled  grass  and  blossoms,  woke  up  the  sleeping 
soil,  and  planted  something  besides  crops,  that  the 
earth  ceased  to  be  mere  clay,  and  the  trees  mere 
timber,  and  the  land  began  to  live  ;  began  to  have 
vioral  heivg  ;  began  to  have  history.  As  body  with¬ 
out  spirit,  is  the  world  without  man.  Things  have 
their  apotheosis  when  they  are  absorbed,  even  by 
their  outward  destruction,  into  his  career.  Civiliza¬ 
tion  is  nature  developed  and  interpreted.  And  of 
all  the  subjects  of  human  thought,  nothing  earthly 
is  so  impressive  as  a  great  organized  eomm unity  of 
human  souls,  such  as  here  began  to  be  two  centu¬ 
ries  ago !  As  accummulated  force — -original  power 
massed  and  operative — it  is  the  highest  symbol  and 
vsuggestion  of  divine  power,  which  is  not  reflected 
best  in  the  rush  of  winds  or  waters,  or  even  in 
chained  and  circling  stars,  but  in  directing,  elaborat- 
ing,  reflective  and  prescient  Thought.  This  is  what 
is  here,  the  magniflcent  living  issue  of  Penn’s  dreams 
and  pains  and  care! 

But  what  we  have  rather  to  inquire  about,  what 
we  have  to  hope  for,  is  in  our  attainment  of  Penn’s 
moral  ideal ;  the  great  principles  and  moralities  of  a 
State  free  in  every  sense,  in  the  personal,  moral  and 
mental  independence  of  every  individual.  And,  above 
all,  in  the  virtue,  public  and  private,  which  he  clearly 
saw  and  prophesied  must  be  the  corner  stone,  or  the 
vital  force,  of  free  institutions.  As  I  think  of  this,^ 
it  occurs  to  me  irresistibly,  that,  were  he  back 


18 


THE  IDEAL  COMMONWEALTH 


among  us,  the  Founder  might  not  be  altogether  as 
Avell  pleased  as  we  might  think.  Two  hundred 
years  is  a  long  time!  The  Idealist  is  apt  to  be 
impatient.  Is  it  certain  that  he  would  be  satisfied 
with  the  progress  his  province  has  made?  The 
wealth,  the  material  expansion,  would  be  a  marvel,  I 
have  said ;  but  Penn  was  quite  capable  of  looking 
through  and  beyond  all  this,  and  enquiring  whether 
in  those  subtler  and  finer  attainments  we  have  made 
a  corresponding  advance. 

At  this  point  there  are  always,  I  fear,  disappoint¬ 
ment  and  surprise  waiting  on  the  study  of  history. 
Truth  moves,  no  doubt,  with  the  irresistible  power 
of  these  vast  glaciers,  mountains  of  ice,  that  once 
ploughed  over  the  whole  northern  slope  of  this  con¬ 
tinent,  scoping  out  lake  beds,  channelling  rivers,  and 
scoring  with  their  eternal  autographs  the  granite 
rocks.  But,  alas,  it  seems,  also,  to  move  almost  as 
slowly.  It  even  gives  an  interest  to  the  past  to  find 
how  alike  men  are,  now  and  in  almost  the  remotest 
civilized  times.  But  it  seems  strange,  too,  that 
generation  after  generation  passes,  century  after  cen¬ 
tury,  and  the  obstinate  substance  of  human  char¬ 
acter  ai)pears  to  mollify  and  refine  hardly  faster  than 
the  geologic  structure  of  the  planet.  I  half  fear  that 
Penn  might  say, — the  country  has  changed,  indeed, 
— but  the  men  ?  The  quarrels  and  cabals  of  his  legis¬ 
lative  body,  the  bickerings  and  backbitings,  the 
jealousy  of  some,  the  avarice  of  others,  on  w^hom  he 
had  to  lean, — alas,  have  they  not  more  than  a 
parallel  in  the  doings  and  the  characters  of  men  in 
like  places  after  two  centuries  ?  And,  if  back  of  all 
this,  back  of  all  the  vulgarity  and  chicanery  of 


AND  ITS  DEALIZATION. 


19 


politics,  and  the  greed  of  business,  there  is  that  vast, 
happy  mass  of  domestic  virtue  and  happiness,  which 
makes  no  sign  in  the  papers,  but  is  the  strength  of 
society  everywhere,  so  it  has  always  been.  In  the 
days  when  Eome  was  at  its  worst,  or  Paris  or 
London  was  at  its  worst,  I  suppose  there  was  always 
this  suhstratiim  of  morality,  simplicity  and  religious¬ 
ness  which' saved  society,  as  it  saves  it  to-day — but 
which  is  too  quiet  and  uneventful  to  have  left  its 
annals.  Historians,  as  Carlyle  complains  so  bitterly, 
have  heretofore  almost  passed  this  by,  and  have 
regaled  the  one  who  supposes  he  is  studying  history, 
with  the  squabbles  of  kings  and  the  vices  of  courts. 
Almost  alone  through  biography  and  poetry  we  get 
glimpses  of  this  under-current  of  real  human  life 
and  find  human  character  three  or  four  thousand 
years  ago,  or  two  hundred  years  ago,  so  nearly  like 
what  it  still  is,  that  one  feels  as  if  the  Avhole  ques¬ 
tion  of  progress  were  something  different  from  what 
we  commonly  suppose. 

And  yet  we  certainly  do  know  more  truth,  we 
see  more  widely  ;  even,  I  believe,  the  mass  of  society 
are  better  men  and  women,  in  something  like  a  fair 
proportion  to  the  more  and  better  they  have  had  a 
chance  to  learn.  The  mass  then  were  not  Penns,  nor 
even  Foxes.  If  we  could  look  into  the  mind  of  the 
average  citizen  of  1682  and  see  the  ideas  and  prin¬ 
ciples  by  which  it  was  inhabited,  his  thought  of  life, 
of  God  and  his  ways,  of  human  nature,  of  moral 
duty,  and  compare  these  with  the  corresponding  con¬ 
tents  of  a  like  man’s  mind  of  to-day;  if  we  could 
see  how  much  is  now  settled,  passed  into  the  region 
of  established  truth  and  of  the  commonplace,  which 


20 


THE  IDEAL  COMMONWEALTH 


then  was  visionary  and  questionable,  we  might  even 
say  the  two  hundred  years  had  been  time  well  spent. 
At  least  the  world  never  made  more  progress  in  such 
a  space  of  time.  We  are  often  misled,  as  I  have  hinted, 
looking  into  the  past,  by  taking  the  utterances  of 
its  great  and  prescient  souls  as  the  standard  of  their 
generation’s  thought.  See  that  the  truth  ’of  politi¬ 
cal  liberty,  now  as  familiar  to  us  as  dsf^ly  breath, 
was  two  hundred  years  ago,  even  in  England,  a  tree 
new  planted  and  struggling,  needing  careful  nurture 
and  protection,  its  broadest  interpretations  almost 
.narrow  beside  what  you  and  I  enjoy  as  the  normal 
condition  of  our  lives;  while  the  higher  thought  of 
mental  and  religious  liberty  was  a  grand  but  diffi¬ 
cult  ideal,  for  which  it  was  still  possible  to  die.  It 
took,  indeed,  one  of  the  greatest  of  wars,  which  youi 
and  I  remember  shuddering,  to  teach  our  own  gener¬ 
ation  the  last  corollaries  of  the  former ;  and  of  the 
latter  creeds  and  sects,  and  many  a  jealousy  lingering 
among  men  of  differing  thought,  show  that  still 
we  have  much  to  learn.  And  yet  again  how  much 
has  come  and  gone,  what  fetters  have  been  broken, 
what  barriers  broken  down,  since  the  Mayflower 
and  the  Welcome  tempted  the  troubled  Atlantic  to 
plant  the  seed  of  wffiat  we  are  1 

In  the  providence  of  God  it  was  the  Puritans, 
men  of  action,  men  of  force,  of  short  views,  perhaps, 
and  narrower  purposes,  but  of  stout  hearts  and 
strong  brains,  resolved,  cool,  clear,  who  fought  the 
outward  battle  of  two-fold  liberty  and  won  its  vic¬ 
tory.  The  Quakers  were  rather  the  seers  of  those 
days,  its  prophets  crying  aloud,  often  things  gro¬ 
tesque  and  absurd,  yet  also  supplying  many  a  strain 


AND  ITS  REALIZATION. 


21 


of  ideal  thought,  and  from  whose  patient  sufferings 
we  cannot  tell  how  much  was  contributed,  as  by  the 
martyrdom  of  Stephen  to  the  conversion  of  Paul,  to 
educate  the  sentiment  of  their  time.  Not  all  were 
fanatics ;  although  their  greatest,  beautiful  concep¬ 
tion  of  Divine  guidance  was  too  suhtile  and  immense 
for  those  days  and  who  can  interpret  it  in  these  ?  But 
even  Mary  Dyer  and  her  fellow  martyrs  on  Boston 
Common  died  not  quite  in  vain  ;  and  if  the  prin¬ 
ciples  of  Fox  and  Penn  stiffened  into  a  cultus  as 
rigid,  and  even  more  so,  than  that  of  Puritanism,  it 
has  produced  a  type  of  character  and  individual 
examples  of  manhood  and  womanhood,  staunch, 
pure,  serene,  of  singular  vision  for  moral  truth, 
and  marvellous  consistency  in  abiding  by  it,  of 
which  its  inheritors  ought  to  he  generously  proud 
and  to  cherish  forever.  The  greatest  woman  of 
America,  whose  fragile  presence  but  whose  massive 
thought  and  searching  eloquence  are  among  the 
choicest  incidental  associations  even  of  these  walls, 
was  a  genuine  product  of  Quakerism,  and  showed 
what  fruit  it  could  hear,  as  her  name  reminds  us  that 
the  practical  culture  of  her  sect  is  a  definite  witness, 
not  to  be  gainsaid,  to  one  of  the  greatest  of  social 
truths  ;  to  what  human  society  was  meant  to  be  and 
will  be  when  its  most  radical  reform,  still  too  slowly 
moving,  is  accomplished,  and  the  true  equality  of 
all  its  members,  without  regard  to  the  physical  dis¬ 
tinction  of  sex,  is  attained  and  established. 

The  fine  ideal  of  William  Penn  went  the  way 
of  all  things  human  when  it  sought  to  realize  itself ; 
but  in  furnishing  a  home  for  such  principles  as  those 
to  which  his  peculiar  people  have  borne  witness,  and 


22 


THE  IDEAL  COMMONWEALTH 


a  theatre  for  their  practical  maintenance  and  test,  he 
did  an  inestimable  service  to  his  kind,  and  to  our 
nation. 

Conscience,  equality,  peace,  temperance,  un¬ 
worldliness,  patience,  serenity,  trust  in  God  and  the 
truth ; — to  have  planted  a  people  whose  function  it 
has  been  for  two  centuries  to  bear  testimony  to  these 
truths,  to  mould  them  into  character  and  to  offer 
them  an  example  to  the  world,  this  is  a  service 
which  should  make  the  name  of  William  Penn 
imperishable. 


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